Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Aghast helplesness to naxalism

It was a holiday for me and I was at home doing practically nothing. My only contribution for the day was a couple of official smses, a stinker to a despicable client servicing whore, paying the telephone bills and running some mundane errands for my mom.
While I was buying myself some medicines from the pharmicist during my visit to the market, there was a sudden commotion outside the pharmicists air conditioned shop. The next moment a man barged into the shop with a heapful of clothes and dumped them on the floor and rushed out. I realized in a couple of seconds what was happening. The man again barged in with another heap of clothes. This time however the pharmicist raised a bit of a protest saying he would not allow this. At that point I got a closer look at this man as he stood for about 2 seconds with a look of aghast helplesness and desparation conveyed through every muscle on his face. He was a fair thin man, wore a shabby T-shirt and trousers and had a beard. I felt distraught seeing his expression..any one would have actually. I was about to tell the pharmicist to help him, but thankfully, the pharmicist did not protest any further and allowed him to dump his precious stocks that he sold on the footpath.
The cause of this situation encountered by this man and numerous other poor, hardworking souls in this country is the raids by our corrupt, inefficient, apathetic police force. They like us to believe that by clearing away some of these poor souls from the footpaths once in while (read, when they want to make a quick buck), they are helping control crime.
So while the rich can keep getting richer, the poor must keep getting poorer. Finally when these poor are trampled beyond human endurance, naxalism is born.
This is the irony of this nation.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Trying hard to hang on and stay positive

What would I do without my daily dose of motivational quotes, followed by some successful self counselling.

Its tough...It hurts cause I get punched where it hurts most... my heart, my ego. Yet I continue to work like theres no tomorrow.

I bend backwards to make sure I put in that extra bit and take the feedback given during my appraisal and act on it diligently.

Yet, I find myself getting constantly ticked off by my bosses. The vibes are cold. I know well they have the power and so I console myself saying, "every dog has its day"

Even winning an award at an industry function did not get me a word of appreciation. I know the reading is clear- My face is not liked. Sometimes.. and Im almost certain about this, they just push me cause they think, "heres a sub-ordinate whos good..so let get the most out of her, which means doing far more than Im expected to do...

It baffles me how some so called seasoned professionals can be so biased, insensitive and completely insecure when it comes to sub-ordinates.

He asserts his authority not through his work, but rather through his aggressive, arrogant and unfair behaviour towards people and me for sure. Beauty and fair skin are the only two attributes which soften him. So now you know what his level is.

Whats is sometimes and rather strangely a sort of consolation for me is the fact that Ive realized this guy is not a very sound professional. He has lots of learning to do himslef. His sense of judgement and instincts are rather weak.

They say whn the going gets tough at work, its best to put your head down and work really hard. Since my taling will not help, Im hoping my work will do some talking for me.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Beauty and the Corporate World

Yes..the topic says it all..If you are beautiful then you can get away with being just ok at what you are supposed to be not just good...but great at...thats the corporate worlds approach.

This is an approach thats only made me feel helpless and bitter many times. Can I really do much about it? Helpless cause i cant do anything to change my looks. Im brown and average looking..not the fair and lovely kinds. Bitter..cause Im very good at my work, but have to struggle and hope to get the appreciation or attention for really good work .Sometimes i get it... a lot of times.. i dont. I dont have any illusions about my quality of work because I get appreciated for it from various quarters who unfortunatey will not be able to influence my growth as much as a certain gentleman for whom beauty comes first. My beautiful, fair and lovely colleague gets attention for doing her regular work. She automatically draws the Titan to her. Shes also quite animated when she talks and is a good package overall. She rates above me in the looks and dressing department. Im not a bad looker and neither do I dress shabbily, but no matter what I do its not something that i can match up wuth her in. But Im far superior at what Im there for...which is my work...Theres of course a significant experience gap between us. I have a lot more years of experience. At the level of experince at which she is now, I had to really work my way to get noticed. I worked hard, really really hard, learned things the hard way, because of which Im good at what I do, most importantly I learnd to work without getting noticed. But this is a rather tough situation for me to handle. I have someone whos much junior to me, yet getting more attention than me for a reason which is not right. But I really want to find a way of addressing this..God help me and you too if you are reading this.