Mayajaal

Recently one my colleagues explained to me the profound philosophy of the Mayajaal of Appraisals… Appraisals are perhaps, by far the most mysterious and dreaded word in every professional’s life and this philosophy expounds the workings of the dreaded appraisal word….how THEY, the slave drivers of us slaves, have developed this philosophy…how THEY have successfully implemented it despite the best efforts of lesser mortals like us to rise above it.

This philosophy depends on a number of givens. First, those who have to leave will leave. They don’t care about whether they are leaving before appraisals or vice versa. They are driven by greater emotions to find greener pastures. This aggrieved lot usually believes that it is a grave injustice that they are stuck at such a place. Basically they feel they are much above the place and also that if they continue in the so not happening place the world might miss out on a legend. This lot also includes calculative criminals who nurse grudges and leave with a sadistic vengeance. Their triumph often consists only of the shattering slap on the faces of their detractors when they drop their resignation letter.

THEY, the makers of the philosophy also don’t worry about the lot who will not leave unless given the pink slip. This bag of loyal losers will stay put, crib, cry, mull, and even dream about the forthcoming appraisals. For them THEY create a Mayajaal of the forever coming up appraisals. Next month… next to next month… next Diwali… next year…next campaign… next promotion…next this…next that...next next…The anticipating losers happily or unhappily thus have many reasons to stick to their place. They don’t want to experiment, they don’t want to work hard (funnily enough they may anyways be working hard in the same god forsaken place). Some of them have even discovered a most innovative excuse for the prevailing scheme of things, namely – “too many changes reflect badly on your CVs.” The morons don’t realize with a mindset like theirs no one would anyways be interested in their CVs.

Stuck between the two lots of criminals and losers are the mixed bags. The poor souls who are neither here nor there, and are basically a confused lot who can’t tell black from white, right from wrong and often are the followers of the herd. In this Appraisal Mayajaal they are the lot who are struck worst as they can’t make up their mind where to look. And if and when they do break out of this confused territory they infringe the former territories.

THEY, the makers of the Mayajaal are not bothered with the first lot. THEY direct their energies in amusing the losers lot and also giving the confused mixed bags regular dosages of confusion. The Mayajaal continues to thrive. And if ever anyone falls out of the losers bracket to the any of the other two territories THEY don’t take tension because there is never any scarcity of new fools waiting to be recruited.

Tides of Naukuchiyatal II

Right after the lunch began the activities. We split up in our allotted teams. First was the intro round for which no one had prepared any thing. Then began the quiz, in which my team played really badly. We didn’t pass any question, as a result of which we got a lot of negative marking. So while before the quiz we were at least the third best team, after the quiz we were nowhere.

Thankfully after the quiz was over, we were given an interesting brief. We had to name and think of a TVC idea for men’s and women’s undergarments. For this we were given 45 mins. It is really so funny that all advertising people tend to think alike and most of the teams came up with the same brand names- Adam & Eve. It was total chaos, once again the TVC was practiced for the first and last time on the stage. I obviously played Satan besides prompting various other dialogues. The story went thus:

Raihaan (Adam) and Pia (Eve) are sitting bored below a Tree (Rakesh and Dinesh with few branches). Adam walks away bored, just then I (Serpent) enter the scene with an apple to tempt Eve. Eve shockingly continues to ignores the apple. Confused I return with another idea. I present the new brands ADAM and EVE. Both Adam and Eve grab them in much confusion. As the voice over starts they go behind the tree and the tree starts shaking suggestively like those 60’s Bollywood songs. The cut back shows a pregnant Eve (Courtesy a towel rolled under her tee) appearing from behind the tree with Adam..

The amount of laughter our TVC produced told us how funny it really was. While our branding was common the way we presented it and our TVC idea wasn’t. After the TVC’s we were given a one hour break. In that one hour I had to choreograph, synchronize, learn, teach, get dressed and blah blah blah... Doing the item number was great fun since I love dancing. Everyone was very surprised to see me dancing. I am supposed to be this boring serious no-nonsense girl. After the item numbers was Antakshari which we again lost miserably. And finally we were free to hit the floor. From the minute the DJ started playing I never stopped. Sadly, they stopped the music as early as at 11pm. After that we had dinner, dinner as expected was good.

All evening I had the great opportunity to unveil new characters. Characters who come alive after getting drunk. It’s amazing to be an onlooker in such circumstances, an onlooker who is sane always. Afterwards Diggi Parul, Sreena and me sat chatting in the balcony. Others also joined us soon. The group soon turned adventurous and starting smoking grass. I retired to my room unwillingly. Got to know the next day that everyone had gone on a laughing spree after that. Missed it!
The return journey was really low key compared to the onward one. Even the ‘Nana Party” (the group who ended any para of any song with Farhan Akhtar’s song Meri laundry ka ek bill…nana nana) was quiet. Maybe this was also because a lot of us suffered from motion sickness. Avomin couldn’t help much in this respect but at least it put me to sleep. When I woke up I was feeling much better. Lunch was amazing because it was yet another picnic. We stopped in the middle of Corbett and had lunch on the open roads. More pics followed.

Next halt was for snacks at Hotel Skylark where we hogged yet more. As the journey was neared end, energy also sapped. Old jokes were revived but they lost humour. There was a last sutta break and sadly we were back to the humdrum of Delhi.

Tides of Naukuchiyatal I

Naukuchiyatal is a still, pristine natural lake stolen from the hustle and bustle of daily life. I had some doubts whether this was the ideal destination for an office trip. I was pleasantly surprised to find it to be otherwise.

Why is it just after the moment is over you don’t want to talk about it any more. Probably you feel words won’t be sufficient to describe the beauty of the moment. The beauty of Naukuchiyatal something like that.

It was an excellent trip. 10 hours of journey. 10 hours of going. 10 hours of coming. In all, we just had a day in our hand. And I am glad I made the most of it. No regrets at all. The theme of the trip was Pirates of the Carribean. The names of the teams were Jack Sparrow, Captain Rake, Boot Strap, Red Beard and Davy Jones. Not having seen any movies of the series I had to use a lot of my imagination for the activities.

I woke up around 8.30 am when I heard voices of some of my colleagues outside my room. Though I was dead tired after the journey, I couldn’t stay in bed for too long. The reason was the lovely place, not to mention the rooms. The girls had the special liberty to occupy the spacious lake facing rooms. Once again I was glad I am girl.

Coming back to the morning, I freshened up and rushed to the lawn where everyone was having tea. It was quite cold, much colder than Delhi. I lied down on a hammock, a fantasy come true. Soon photo sessions began, our organisation has quite a number of photographers. Prarthana made all the models really pleased with themselves. None of us had had our bath yet, we were not even dressed properly and hence were quite happy with the snaps.

Photo session was followed by breakfast. And what a spread the breakfast was. It had toast, butter, cutlets, upama, cornflakes, fruits, tea / coffee, juice, omlette…Considering my no breakfast or milk and skip lunch working days this was heavenly. After breakfast, we sat under the shy sun with little gossips and giggles for company. Some of us then set out for a trek. The trek was beautiful, everyone went mad taking snaps. But when I thought about it, I felt almost 70% of Assam is like this. There we don’t have to go out for a holiday. Our life is a holiday.

Anyways we soon reached a dead end and realized that we had taken the wrong way. We retraced our way back to the resort. On the way back there was this particular Brigadier’s home, a very pretty bungalow with yellow and red roofs with lots of flowers in the lawn. Reminded me of lost times. They also had two big dogs, observed desi dogs in the hills have furry coats.

I broke off from the party at the resort for a quick bath. Kishore came knocking on my door afterwards. The smiling lake had beckoned for boating. I hadn’t expected to enjoy boating all that much, boating turned out to be a really soothing experience. Absolutely beautiful nine edged lake embraced us in its lap. Sleepy, hazy, sun kissed, legs in the air, with the infant gurgles inside the ear, and a deep warmth inside the mind we got off on the other side of the lake.

Now it was time for horse riding. Pawan and Sikandar were two of the handsome horses. Pawan was extremely well behaved. As far as I can remember I have ridden horses only once or twice before. To get up on the horse was quite a task, horses being tall and me being short. The first time I got up I thought I had torn something in my thigh. But thankfully it wasn’t anything I remembered after 10 mins. I realized I quite liked horse riding and I didn’t feel like getting off once I was up. We went to a height from where we could see the entire lake. As we laced the treacherous edges of hills, I learnt the difference between a trot and a gallop.

We crossed a big Hanuman mandir, I didn’t make the effort of getting off the horse. Around 12.45 pm we reached the resort. The headache of group activities was still on my head. I had to collect all the truant team members to practice the item number for the first and the last time. It was not even 1.10 pm when we had to split for lunch. Lunch was again amazing, with everything one could wish for. I didn’t know what to have and what not and ended up having soup after the lunch.
...contd.

Hard Decisions ????

What is more important company or employee? Where does the ethics fit in the gamut of survival and churning money. It’s true all professionals behave like chameleons or rather like frogs “JUMPING FROM HERE TO THERE”. In such a world how does a company behave? More so when the company is drowning.

Is it fair to just come and announce that starting tomorrow we begin downsizing the company. What if you are given a termination letter which has nothing to do with your performance? What if you know your name is on the list? How is it to listen to a thousand rumours? Your name dropping in out of the list? What if only one person has to be chosen between you and a colleague and you know the other person has been doing really well. What if they keep you and chuck out someone else just because you are less expensive? What if you don’t know if you really want to continue inspite of not being in the list?

What if this is the second month of your job and this is the kind of disillusionment you meet. What if you know that the person you are gossiping with is going to be sacked, but you don’t have the guts to say so? What if even without asking for it you are given the assurance which is nothing but a lie? What if you find out that from the very next day you are not supposed to come to the place you came everyday? What if you come to know you have been terminated with immediate effect?

What if you start feeling bad for a person for whom you felt no real love? Why even today I fail to give a hug to the person who needs it? Why do I fail to console someone? Why this hesitation? Why is it so difficult to say what you think?

Where does one leave behind the idealistic virtues which you had forever nurtured? Why don’t you have something called savings? Why can’t you resign? Why if you resign you have to fall back on your parents? Why wouldn’t anyone believe why you are resigning? Why does it matter so much what others think? Why will you still take the selfish way out and not resign immediately?

Who is responsible for all this shit? Why is everything veiled under the word “hard decisions”? Why am I asked not to be emotional? Why have I been asked to be selfish and secure my position?

To hell with everyone, I would rather be emotional. Only that makes me feel I am alive.

Away with company loyalty

As you chart your growth in the unchartered terrains called ‘career’ do you leave company loyalty far behind??
10 years ago working at the same place for 7-8 years was perhaps called loyalty. Today it is called lack of ambition. 1 year, even 6 months is enough for one place. Things have so changed that they have actually done away with the concept of a loyal employee. But what of stability? Even stability has no value whatsoever. Today as I go for an interview, people ask me what I have been doing at a not so happening place for so long, “so long being 1and half years”. It is taken as the first sign of not belonging to the so called successful lot. It is a little embarrassing if not difficult to explain that I am in the same organisation out of choice because I am enjoying it and not due to lack of opportunities.
I am really old school in these matters; I had rather thought I would be appreciated for being stable. But it doesn’t seem so. Now jump I will, and just watch out how.