"Women Empowerment", "Gender Equality" and stressed Indian "WorkingWomen"..

I recently read the results of a survey that showed that women in India are more stressed than the women in any other country. The percentage of women who consider themselves stressed in India was reported around 87%, as compared to 17% in US which is the country with maximum percentage of working women. I understand that the universality of these surveys can be questioned, but still the results can't be assumed to be wrong in entirety. This led to a series of thoughts in my mind, which I am blurting out here. I understand that science has dedicated branches, like psychology and sociology etc., to study shifting mindsets of people and society at large. However, I would like to put forward my views based on my knowledge and life experience.

Today, in any corner of India, we can hear educated people talk about "Women Empowerment" and "Gender Equality". Being educated myself, I completely support these concepts. But like any other make-shift idea, like Adhaar or the universal identity program launched by Indian govt., I believe that these ideas need to be carefully understood before actually adopting or implementing them.

We have been taught in our schools, how in ancient times Indian women were oppressed and were subject to the social rituals like "Sati Pratha" (the act of cremating a live lady along with her husband if latter died) or "Parda" (women hiding their face while meeting people or not meeting people at all). These oppressive rituals and practices went away with time, but still women were not given a major say in social activities or decisions, not even in sensitive things like family planning.
In the traditional household setup, men would go out in the morning and then spend the whole day trying to earn resources to sustain family, while women would spend the whole day cleaning the house, cooking up meals, and serving the children. Men only would plan the future of the family based on their limited awareness of the outside world, limited because they would have seen world only in the perspective of their work. With growing kids and increasing size of family, men would get occupied in the struggle to earn more resources, while women would continue to do the same old household work. Eventually the disparity in terms of the awareness, between men and women grew so much that women were reduced to the meager followers of what men demanded them to do. This resulted in a shift of center of power towards men, which first resulted in corruption of mind and then the debacle of the society.

With the gradual growth of education and awareness, an intellectual class grew in India which developed a progressive thinking. People started realizing how women could play a better and a more important role in the prosperity the family. They realized that if women were aware, they could actually run the entire family by planning an efficient use of the resources earned by men. This could result in a proper balance of power - men earn resources and other essentials, women plan and spend those resources to sustain life and make it more beautiful. With this balance of power, women could hold a position equally important to that of men in the social world. And that's how the terms "Women Empowerment" and "Gender Equality" came up. With this history behind these two concepts, I feel that these ideas have been either misunderstood or not understood at all by majority of the Indian women.

As per my observation, majority of the modern women would describe these terms as below:

• Women Empowerment - To enable women to work and earn money, and thus have a say in family or society.
• Gender Equality - To enable women to work and earn as much money as men can, to have the same importance and respect as men.

They consider talking about household as demeaning their education. They will never talk about the "balance" of life. They associate social "importance" to "money" and "social relevance" to "the capability to earn money". I can understand that in old times, importance and social relevance were associated to money. But I also understand that the people who did this faulty association were uneducated and unaware. We can't claim that we are educated, and deserve to be "empowered" and "equal", if we still hold such faulty associations true in our minds.

I can understand that with men busy outside and women busy only in household, the flower of life could not blossom, but it was still watered and alive. Now, with the misunderstood concept of "working women", both men and women are busy earning money and the house is locked up. Like the house, children are also ignored. Because of lack of parental guidance in formative years, they end up either being ignorant or getting carried away by the exciting and misguiding external influences. With parents fighting the world and children mired in ignorance, the flower of life dies.

There are certain biological facts that we cant change. For e.g. men cant give birth, they cant feed or raise a new born. Labor pain and motherhood are the biggest responsibilities of women, in which men can provide extreme moral support but they cannot play a major role even if they want to. With these biological facts, we need to understand that "work" or "job" is also a big responsibility which demands extreme commitment. So if women want to work, they have to mentally and physically train themselves to be able to handle both these responsibilities. Without the physical and mental preparation, if women take up these tasks, they'll not be able to maintain the balance of life and will fall. They can't just focus on "work" and ignore the "house" or "family", and vice-versa. They can blame men for not being cooperative, but they need to understand that it's the lack of their mental preparation that they could not garner support from men or family. And I don't think that educated Indian men have such corrupt minds that they don't want to help their better-halves in achieving what they want.

We need to realize that we were born to live, not to earn money and importance. When we live, and when we get educated, we develop a thought of how we want to further live. Life looks beautiful only if we are able to live it the way we want to live it. Money is just one of the means to attain the beauty of life. We forget that "money" is not important, the "beauty of life" is.

With our education and intellect, we need to define what our "life" is and how we want to live it. There's no harm in being selfish and pursuing higher career goals, but then we should not be impacted or stressed by what society throws at us. We can opt for pursuing a high profile career and not allow to get forced into a socially demanding ways of living. But if we can't ignore the social aspect, we need to understand that we need to  maintain the balance between "work", "house" and 'family" to sustain life. And to maintain that balance, if we have to compromise with our "job", we should not think that we are loosing our "power" or "position" in the society.

To take an example from my personal life, my mother is a post-graduate from a reputed college, and a housewife. If I try to recapture from the time of my consciousness, had she not focused only and only on my father, my sister and me, all of us would have never been able to attain the stable and healthy life that we are living now. She put in all her education and intellect in "beautifying" our family, and our home. She is "empowered" to take any decisions, be it property or any other major spending, and has saved a substantial household budget from and for family expenses. While I cherish my father's guidance on how to deal with the practicalities of life, I "equally" cherish my mother's guidance on moralities and proper ways of domestic living. And that's what brings respect to her and to our entire family.

Like I said in my last post, life is a jigsaw with work, family and self as its various pieces. Working women should try to look at the various pieces of the picture of their life, and hold the pieces together to maintain the beauty of their life. If they do so, they'll feel the harmony and no "stress" between all aspects of life..

The jigsaw of life ..

I recently got promoted from Consultant to Senior Consultant. As soon as I got over with celebrations and started settling into the new role at work, my mind started thinking "What next? What should be my next career goal?". While contemplating, I started introspecting and looked at myself from an unemotional, external, critical mind. 

I got a bird's eye view of my life, in which it looked like a "jigsaw" made up of following pieces:

  1. Work - the economic support for survival
  2. Wife - the companion of life for joys and sorrows
  3. Parents - the foundation
  4. Bauji - the connection to the ethical, social and cultural roots
  5. Relatives - the responsibilities
  6. Self - the surreal desires

When I thought more deeply about it, I realized that this jigsaw started with being a single piece "portrait" of "Parents". Then, as I grew up, more pieces were added to this "portrait" that turned it into a "landscape". The chronological order in which these pieces were added is - Parents, Self, Work, Wife, Bauji, and Relatives. The jigsaw of my life looks beautiful, at least as of now :), because there exists a harmony between the new pieces which were added and the ones which already existed.

When taking a decision in any of the life's constituent aspects, or forthcoming aspects e.g. "Children" in mine :), we need to make sure that the decision maintains or rather strengthens the harmony between all aspects. For e.g., when it comes to "Work" and to the questions like 'What should be my next career goal?", we cannot simply decide from the professional perspective - higher salary, more revered job profile, fast paced career growth etc. Such opportunities often excite us, but we cannot ignore the fact that if the "piece" of "Work" were lifted even slightly above the rest of the "pieces", the whole picture of life will look distorted.

Having put forward a very picturesque theory of making apt decisions, I hope I am able to make a right decision for my next career goal :). Thanks for reading this, I hope to get acquainted with some interesting and beautiful "jigsaws" of lives of some of you, and will definitely let you know whether my next career goal beautified or distorted my "jigsaw" of life :)..

Go for "old", you'll find "gold"..

This pic is of my dearest and oldest friend, who recently turned 92, on 12th Oct. He retired as joint registrar from Haryana Cooperative Society in 1981, and has authored three books and a thesis on "Cooperative Banking". Besides these, he has many accomplishments on academic and professional fronts, which I would have remembered if my brain had the same retention capacity as his. My friendship with him is about two years old, and is attributed to my moving to Gurgaon in April 2013. Prior to that we were just acquaintances, knowing each other as grandfather and grandson.

As a grandson, I knew him as an old man who yearned for respect and emotional care from his family. His story is same as that of many other old people in the typical middle-class Indian households, I can claim that the story is common. And not just their immediate children, but all grown-ups in their bloodline should be equally accused for such plight of the elders.

In the current competitive world, and the resultant fast-paced life, we feel that our time is "gold" and we should spend it only on something that promises high returns. We spend a few carats of this time on our parents because they are the source of money for our education, or will attend to us when we are ill, or will attend to our infants when we will be busy chasing higher professional goals. We spend another few carats on our spouses or love mates because they will provide us company for parties, vacations and shopping, or will help fulfill our physical desires. We spend some on our children coz they might get distracted and may do harm to either themselves or to the family reputation. We cannot ignore our colleagues because they will help us climb the sky-high ladders at work. We even fear offending our maids coz if they abandon us, then we will have to spend a portion of our "gold" in maintaining the house. But we don't realize that with this materialistic gain oriented mindset, we have spent all our gold and have become worthless.

My father always wanted to do his due as a son to keep Bauji (as my grandfather is called) with him, with respect and care. He fought hard against the materialistic mindset, but lost. Until two years back, I could not help Bauji because of multiple factors - focus on career and girlfriend being the prime ones other than the lack of right maturity level. But after completing 4 years of job for my both employers (company and girlfriend), and after getting involved in major decisions related to family property and investments, I had the appropriate maturity level to make 2 switches - join a "big four" multi-national company in Gurgaon and become a "family man". Apart from renovating our 18 year old house, doing single-handed planning of my marriage, helping my in-laws in extreme times, and planning and organizing my sister's marriage, I also became Bauji's confidant and thus his best friend.

Believe me, it did not take a lot of effort to befriend him. All I needed was to drive 40 kms, every or alternate weekend, to meet him and then just listen to him for an hour or so. Whenever I met him, he used to say "bada accha lagta hai tu har weekend aa jata hai, mil jata hai, dil ko tasalli ho jati hai". I realized how my small effort of just driving 40 kms is giving so much happiness to Bauji. He did not ask for any favors that demanded labor or expenditures, he just wanted to know that things are normal in my and my family's life. Then he would share what has been going on in his mind for the last one week. His thoughts could be anything - short stories from his life where he stuck to his principles and not giving in to distractions, care for a few of the 55 odd descendants in his bloodline, thoughts on current mindset of the society, or thoughts on the current affairs being reported in the newspapers.

I am blessed to have realized that his thoughts are actually the "mine" which supplies to me the "ore" to generate my "gold". Though I can't imbibe all his principles, but having imbibed a few has helped me develop an intellect to take judicious decisions in my life. And then he has given me a few golden words, in the form of his sayings which, whenever I have tried to tell others, have helped me shine like a diamond in the dark.

I will end this with one such golden saying of his - "Present Thanks are Future Invitations". So thank you for reading this post and allowing me to share my thoughts with you. I hope you will spread the thought if you like it..

Take a pause...

Hey friends, I know it's been long but lets see if this post finds some readers..

Today while sitting in my small rented room, which they call "studio apartment" in Gurgaon, it just struck me to check if this blog still exists. To my amazement, it does. When I went through my previous posts, I leaped into that world of thoughts to which I had not given a visit for the past 4 years of my life. It may look cliched, but I couldn't help but to think about the changes that have come in my life, and in the lives of the few people with whom I have been keeping in touch once in an year, or so, over the last 4 years. I am taking a pause from my daily thoughtless life, thinking about what I have done and how I've evolved over the past few years, and this starts my drive to draw some general pattern from how our lives might have changed.

I still remember that I started writing this blog to:
1. Improve my grammar, for CAT 2009.
2. To share my thoughts, which were more philosophical than pertaining to the general blogging trend that stuck to expressing views over political or demographic developments happening around.
3. To maintain a "bro book" kinda thing to capture memories of my best friends from college.
4. To remind me to "take a pause" and come back to this "world of thoughts" sometime while running full throttle in my busy life.


With this post, I feel that I am effecting the cause mentioned in the 4th point. The other 3 being slightly touched upon in the past, this gives me some sense of achievement in fulfilling all the goals. Please bear with me for this philosophical stuff, those who survive till the end of the post are entitled to my gratitude.

One of the reasons I come back to this blog is that I have recently realized that over the years my reading has taken a back seat in my daily class of activities. While preparing for CAT, I found this new love for reading. Starting with Chetan Bhagat's youth stories, and Dan Brown's fiction I somehow came across The Fountain Head, and from then on started on a journey towards philosophical enlightenment. The Fountain Head was followed by The Algebra of Infinite Justice, I'm OK you're OK, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Lila, and self help books from the likes of Ken Blanchard and Robin Sharma. All these books were like a Pandora's box which gave me a never-before-thought and unique perspective towards life. It groomed my personality, widened my Circle of Influence (leadership institute training at Infosys Mysore) and, I'm not bragging, built a credible Brand Image of me among my peers. I attribute all my professional success and rational thought development to the learning received from these books.

However, the wonderful journey of enlightenment didn't continue as I wanted it to, and I got distracted by other quests of my life.

It is in this "pause" that I recognize the distraction. If I think of the possible causes of this distraction, they could be:
1. The end of college that put me in that sad mood of missing the happening life, outside the protective umbrella of family.
2. The blinding joy of getting employed and earning money for "the first time".
3. Start of my first relationship, that shot the testosterone levels so high that there was no turning back :).

And now if I think about how far that distraction took me from "enlightenment", I reach my present which is:
1. Working with a Big Four MNC, earning approx. 10 lacs, with a slip disk, fat cheeks, pouted belly, and the big question "will I be able to plan my future with this salary?", and another question "when will I be physically fit again?"
2. Managing family properties, planning investments, and feeling the heat of complicated family problems and responsibilities.
3. Serving "Pyar ka Punchnama", believe me there's only one difference - I'm called "baby" instead of "babu".

I wished I had elongated this "pause", but it seems there's still some waiting when the "pause" becomes routine and the meaningless routine becomes a "pause". With these "unleashed expressions" coming to light, I think I can trace the way back to the source of this light. Wish me luck, see you soon...

Roles

Training is over and as a happy surprise I'm going to be paid just for warming my seat (better say bench :)) in my office, atleast for the next 2 weeks.
Enjoying the SARKARI feel in the PRIVATE NAUKRY, a sweet memory from my training period at Mysore came to my mind. Here it is..

Stream training was over and we were free to enjoy, to be happy, to do whatever we felt like doing or to not to do any damn thing (the last one being the most popular thought). But as the weekend next to our Stream Compre Exam passed, I found an unpleasant, and a completely unexpected, emptiness surrounding me. In this emptiness came the realisation that quite contrary to my frustu beleif that the only role we played during the training was that of some fortunate under-privileged students being paid by the company for OUR learning, all of us were playing some very small but an important role in each others' lives. These roleplays were overlooked because of the immense workload, but, through this post, i just dont want them to go unnoticed. Now when i look back at these roleplays, and their players, a nice little smile comes on my face & that makes this memory very pleasant. These roles helped me sail through the EXTREME training and also helped me learn a lot of things apart from the usual # include and other such freaking stuff.. Here i mention a few of those very lovable roles:

The Stand Up Comedian, who presented some very serious facts about "how our asses gonna be brutally beaten up during the training" in the most comical way possible. The laziest leech and a hardcore Sachin fan, and the one who definitely knew how to make his friends smile.. A natural leader, and a man with a tremendous respect for women.

The tea-time critic of Infosys, govt policies and GALS. A walking encyclopaedia of current affairs. HARYANVI aur CHAI are the perfect combination for a stress-bursting afternoon break.

The 5-pointer devil who simply enjoyed telling us about the vastness of the assignments and the projects lying ahead. Also, the most cunning DEALER when it came to MONOPOLY (a flash game we played during the training).
The most irritating OSHO, whom I called DADA, who was at the receiving end of the regular beating by his peers, constantly abused, but still had all of us as his followers. The most hated but still the most accepted Project Leader of our POST project.

The coolest and the most tension-free SLEEPING SHEEP (with a smile ;)), who just didnt have any idea about what was happening throughout our project, but still managed to complete the training comfortably.
The semi-HARYANVI fan of historical leaders, who always had his "flying high" experiences of "drugs" and other such "far-from-our-thinking-domain" stuff for all of us.

It was a nice little experience of life with all these fellows, and getting posted to Chandigarh DC with a few of them promises another pleasant experience ahead. I do hope that I also played some role in their lives, so they remember me the same way they all will be remembered by me.. :)

beauty and the circle of influence..

Stepping into the corporate world, and going through the training process, as a preliminary requirement for being "industry-ready", I've had a handful of joyful experiences, joyful coz they helped me get a better insight of myself and gave me an idea of how I can use my capabilities to make a difference to this rather indifferent world.

In one of my ILI(Industrial Leadership Institute) training sessions, I was introduced to the concept of "The Circles of Concern and Influence". Quite self-explanatory in their names, the "Circle of Concern" binds inside its boundaries the things, or the people around us, who affect us & our action. The "Circle of Influence", on the other hand, is a relatively smaller circle inside the "Circle of Concern" which contains the people who can actually be affected by our action. And the "affect" here means changing the way the people think and thus changing the way people act.

Leaving aside the rest of the "gyan" associated with these circles, I started to think about the factors that would help people grow their "Circle of Influence" because that's the area that defines the boundaries of "Personal Effectiveness" (yet another session which is a part of my training ;)). Just into the thought I had a feeling that beauty or glamour may be one very important or, I would say, the most powerful tool for expanding the boundaries of this
"Circle of Influence".

Moving further in this thought process, I started finding the things i get attracted towards, apart from girls (who, again, have to be "BEAUTIFUL ;)"). A list of quite illogical, wierd, but true, things and activities came to my mind - acting (being a hero and all that bollywood stuff), getting fairer and (thus) smarter, to be a part of some hacking community (having chicks like Angelina Jolie), to earn money and party around, to visit places like Austria, Switzerland and on and on. All these things, and all this thinking, were somehow and somewhere driven by an influence of style or glamour and the excitement that is attributed to these things. Then began the analysis, why did these things come first to my mind and not the things like - doing something to provide a nice home to the family of a "javan"(soldier) guarding the Chandigarh airport standing under the scorching summer sun, teaching children in rural areas, telling them about banking and all to manage their money and other awarenesses. And even if these things are there in my mind, am I actually acting on them the same way I am acting on the stylish things that first came to my mind ? May be I would have converted the better part of my thoughts into action if I'd often seen some beautiful and very smart people (SRK or Katrina) doing the stuff like that on telvision, may be that would have associated more excitement and style with those, definitely better, ideas. Yes, I am capable of doing all these things and I am to some extent doing that, but that's not going to create a difference on a larger scale. What i need at the moment is to try and make people around me think in this direction. But can I do that? May Be. Can SRK do that, Yes?

Many people may question the appropriateness of this, but i would still like to put forward a question: Who do you think can bring about a positive change, in the way "COMMON" Indian population think, on a larger scale - Dr.Abdul Kalam or Mr.Amitabh Bachchan ? Both the above mentioned personalities have experience and capability, and are comparable, but what if we take the comparison to be between Dr.Amartya Sen, or say Arundhati Roy, and Hrithik Roshan. The answers, as obvious to me are, Mr.Amitabh Bachchan and Hrithik Roshan.

Taking the things into my domain, although the company I'm working for is a pool of around 1 lakh potentially great engineers and they all are being trained to be personally effective and "industry-ready", but still out of these 1 lakh engineers I can find a very less percentage to have a personality (which is not defined just by how beautiful you look) that can create an impact, that can bring about a positive change in the way the Indian society thinks. And whatever amount of training, to be personally effective, they may be given, their roots have already been grounded as such. I mean no company can train you to be fit and keep your body in shape, no company can train its female employees to vax the unwanted hair off their face, no company can, and
also should not, teach its men not to wear those "painter's" jeans or t-shirts, no company can teach its employees how to carry themselves in their own style and not look like a "WANNABE" and all. Its just that no emphasis is laid on these aspects in the earlier years of our education. And apart from not helping to bring about any positive change, such dismal personality of the intellectual working class of India gives the outside world an impression that India is a factory of "intellectual labourers" and no potential leaders or managers.

It may be theoretically wrong, but if you have the intellectual assets to bring about a positive change in the way people THINK, you can't do that until and unless you are able to draw the attention of people and make them listen to you, which can be done only if they see that "X-factor" in you. And again, ASSETS like PROSPERITY (ref my last post) has two constituents- Intellectual Assets and ;)...

What's with this word "paiyya" ..

Hey friends... having lived in chandigarh for the past 4 years, apart from learning punjabi and its very sweet n love shedding abuses on 'maas' and 'behans', a word that i have come across very frequently is "paiyya" (pronounced as bhaiya with the 'bh' replaced by the sound of 'p').

People here use this word for the people of UP and Bihar. When I asked some of my friends about what do they actually intent at saying when they call these people 'paiyya', the answer i got form them was something like -- these are like low-standard people, who dont have as good an etiquette as we have, and their way of carrying themselves and the style of talking is so backward and funny.

I dont know why these Chandigarh people brag so much about their English speaking and lavish style of living, when they actually dont have any sense of carrying themslves. Imagine a "non-paiyya" jatt wearing Tommy Hilfiger Clothes, Ray Ban goggles, getting out of his Skoda at Stu-C, taking his Apple I-phone out from his pocket, dialling a number and saying -- "Hor payi kiddaan.." (Hey bro! Hw r u??)

Why do the people here judge a person from his physical appearance? Everyone cant be rich enough to wear only branded underwears. I have met a lot of so-called "paiyyas" and have observed that their level of thinking, the smartness and aptitude with which they can handle even extremely difficult situations is much more superior than many of those "self-acclaimed" smart Chandigarh people.

What i want to say is that we (the Chandigarh people) may be blessed with prosperity in terms of money, but we must learn to respect the fact that prosperity has two components -- money and brain. Having just one of them doesn't make us prosperous, and even if we have both it does not give us the right to criticise or abuse others. We must stop such discrimination n stop using such words against our own countrymen, because before belonging to UP, Bihar or Chandigarh we belong to India and we must respect each other to gain respect for our country, first from within itself and then from the outside world..