"....bitwa ke pass gpay hai sahab... mujhe ye sab nahi samajhta..."

"....bitwa ke pass gpay hai sahab... mujhe ye sab nahi samajhta..."

....he said. [Son has gpay sir, I don't get all this].

We have an Iron Man we usually go to. Not the Avengers wala, but the guy who irons clothes. An Istry wala. I guess "presser" is the right term for it.

He operates from a small room which is also his home. He presses clothes outside the home on a table and his brother presses them on a table inside. There is a bed on which his son ( 20 something ) is usually seen sitting on. Next to it, his wife (in a ghoonghat) is seen sitting on the floor and cooking (I usually go to pick up clothes late in the evening). 

Everytime I visit him, I am fascinated by the son and the wife. The son looks like a model. Always working on a high-end Dell laptop. The way he is built (well toned body), groomed & dressed usually - he'd make most onlookers admire him. Proper model/actor material. The wife is entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining the cash. Everytime one pays, the Ironman outside passes the money to his brother, who hands it over to the lady, who in turn keeps the money in a box and returns change, if any, while she continues cooking. The aroma of her cooking is always enticing & often reminds me of a prose from my primary school English textbook titled "Tit for Tat" (where a poor man with just a piece of bread smells something cooking nearby & puts his bread over the steaming food hoping that the steam entering his bread would make it tasty). 

The other day I went to collect ironed clothes in a hurry and forgot to carry cash. I asked him if it would be okay to pay online via Paytm or Googlepay. That's when he called his son out with his phone so that I could pay. The handsome hunk came out and requested me to scan the barcode from his phone very courteously and thanked me for the payment. "What do you do?'' I asked him. "Sir, I work as a software development engineer,'' he replied swiftly, in a very polished tone, before heading back in to continue working on his laptop. 

It is always heartwarming to know that the sons & daughters of most of today's maids, cooks, drivers, garbage pickers, auto drivers, pressers and other similar workers are ( or will ) progressing to the next level by means of proper education, thereby setting up a strong base for pivoting the lives of their family members for the better. Only apt to call all these parents who enable them to do so as Iron Men/Women.

"Please clap. Taali bajao sab log..."

"Please clap. Taali bajao sab log... As soon as you see that applaud light turn on, keep clapping till it goes off" 

"Now raise your hand and wave left to right. Smile while you do it.."

"Now laugh loudly".

It was 2001.   A few college friends had got free passes to watch a dance show called Razzmatazz which we all used to watch every week. We were super excited. On the day of the recording, I picked up my best outfit, ironed it nicely and rushed to the studio at 10 am.

It was a huge studio and it was packed with the audience, mostly college going kids. For some reason, there was no air conditioning or perhaps it wasn't effective. So an hour went by as we waited for the action to start while we were sweating in our fancy clothes. Nearly 2 hours later, some guy came on stage. He wasn't the anchor or any celebrity (we were told there would be some celebrity judges for the show). He announced that the show would begin shortly. In the mean time, he wanted us to do what he was about to tell us. For the next 45 min, he told us to assume we were watching something nice on stage and do stuff like clapping, cheering, laughing and waiving hands in tandem. 

An hour more passed by and there was still no action on the stage. The heat was getting unbearable and so was the hunger, so we decided to leave. Outside the studio, we found a guy selling samosas on a bicycle. People who know me know that I am nuts about samosas. All through college, I used to have 2 samosas a day. So spotting a guy selling samosas while we were starving was like spotting an Oasis in the desert. We immediately bought some samosas and boy oh boy! Were they good! Maybe the hunger was acting up, but all of us loved them so much we each had about 4 of them each before we came back home, dejected.

A few weeks later, while watching an episode, I was shocked to spot us waiving and clapping at a dance performance, not once but multiple times. I was stunned for a moment and only then did I realize how editing works. Apparently, the whole audience piece was shot separately and the dance acts were captured separately and all of it was weaved into an episode seamlessly. 

So often, what we see in life is far from reality. Be it televised shows or a situation in real life. Often there is more to it than meets the eye, but unless we are lucky/vigilant to spot it, we mostly miss the fact.

The reason this memory got a nice spot in my mind is only & only as the memory of "one of the best samosas I've ever had". Some days we set out planning to make a great memory and we return back home making a great memory, yet the reasons for it could be entirely unexpected.

By the way, try samosa usal/misal some day. It is mind blowing.

International Mother Language Day

"How was your day...." "Let me take the bag...." "Let's wait for your friend...."

Today my kid's school van driver was not available & hence I went to pick up my kid from school. Nearly every time I go to her school, I hear parents talk to their kids in English, whereas every time I see my kid I ask "Su Kairu Aaje?" meaning "what did you do today?" in Gujju, which is my mother tongue. Yes, we opted for an English medium school as against a vernacular one as that does give the kid an edge in a country where English is used commonly for work- related communication. When the kid was in pre-primary, the teachers told all parents to try and converse with kids in English so that their language improves which is a valid point too. What though is a bit surprising is that many parents prefer to speak to their kids in English almost all the time. In some ways, even I am guilty of speaking to my gujju friends in English (or Hindi) and when I think about it, at times we do tend to attach a stigma to using our mother tongue outside our homes, if not within it. 

Please note, I am in no way calling it a wrong or right behavior, but it is just an observation. I was just discussing this with my wife and, incidentally, I saw a post on LinkedIn which mentioned that today, Feb 21st, is International Mother Language Day and thought about sharing this. 

While I tried to Google why it is called "mother" tongue & not "father" tongue, the findings weren't conclusive, yet the theme that came out ( as found in a BBC article) is "In this metaphor, language is seen as coming from your primary caregiver, the person who looked after you most when you were young, and traditionally this was mothers."

Let's be proud of our roots and appreciate the mother tongue and not hesitate to use it openly in our personal spaces.

(The text in the image reads "Kem Cho" , meaning "How Are You" in Gujarati ).

"The geyser doesn't work..."

"The geyser doesn't work..." 

...mom had told us all. This was when I was around 6-7 yrs old & we had stayed in that new house for as many years. So, as a middle class family, we always heated bathing water in a large vessel on the gas stove. This continued for 20 yrs.

Then, when I was around 20 & studying engineering, I once asked mom "Why is this geyser not working? Why did the builder provide it then?" "That's how it came when we bought the flat. The builder forgot to give a connection to the geyser,'' she said. "Let me try atleast" I suggested. "No!! Don't ever touch that switch, you could get a big shock!" she warned me in a stern voice. This is what she had always told us over the years & we were always scared of that heavy looking switch. 

A few weeks passed & I still couldn't understand why the builder had given a non-functional geyser. So one day, without asking mom, I took a belan (the wooden roller used to make chapatis) & went to the bathroom. I was aware that the wooden belan would protect me from a possible electrical shock. I pushed the dreaded switch on (the dangerous red light glowed) with the belan and voila! A miracle! Steaming hot water started flowing from the tap & I screamed "Mummy, come here, quick!" Mom came hurriedly & I told her what I had just done & we both kept staring at the hot water flowing. The feeling was no less than witnessing a Godly miracle unfold! "How can it be!" my mom asked in disbelief. "I was told this geyser doesn't work and that we should never touch that big switch!" she said, still shocked at the sight. Definitely not the kind of "shock" she had warned us about.

So finally we started using that geyser. Eventually, after a few years, we renovated the house & installed a new one. Earlier today, I was at a neighbor's place & saw the same geyser and clicked it. "It's still working as it was 40 years back,'' he claimed with pride.

I came back home & told mom about it & we discussed how we had suffered for 20 long yrs, enduring uncountable mishaps that had occurred while heating the water on the gas! Ignorance is not always bliss. Mom, dad & us 3 siblings had not dared to turn that dreaded switch on even once in all those years. I still do not know who told Mom that it was not working but what is unbelievable is how all of us in the family never touched that switch believing the geyser was not working as Mom had told us so. The story is so unbelievable that I am sure some of you reading this might really feel that this is a fictional story, but no part of it is fiction. It's as unbelievable as it sounds.

That's life. So often the things we are looking for are right in front of us, hiding in plain sight, the way we want it to be, but perhaps we are living in disbelief or not looking at them because we were told/conditioned to not look/think about them. We will often endure inconvenience & pain for a long time than think about what's available readily and easily to put us out of our miseries.

"..be sure to carry a box of tissues, I always did that for my reviews with her.."

"...be sure to carry a box of tissues; I always did for my reviews with her...," said my colleague with a smile.

Let's call this woman "Rani." Rani had been with the firm for many years but hadn't received a promotion. She was one level away from a managerial position and had expressed her desire to move on from her current role to learn and grow elsewhere. I had recently taken on an additional responsibility and needed another team member. My manager asked me if I would consider her, and Rani joined my team.

Six months later, it was time for appraisals. As I left my desk for the meeting room, her former manager, who sat across from me, said the above quote. The meeting went smoothly. We discussed her performance, and then came the question - "What should I do to get promoted to an Assistant Manager? If you can tell me, I will work on it with discipline." 

 

The great thing about HR operations—or any type of operations work—is that the tasks are usually quantifiable and measurable. I set goals for her based on the time-sensitive steps in her work, each of which had a standard operating procedure. I created a simple Excel spreadsheet to track her work weekly. Deviations due to uncontrollable factors were discussed, while controllable ones were noted as areas for improvement. 

Rani, a determined single mother of two, had never finished her degree because of family responsibilities, yet she was a quick learner. Not only did she learn to handle deviations, but she also mastered tracking her work via Excel. She requested to come in two hours later than the usual start time, which I agreed to, knowing she had morning responsibilities. Some evenings, I'd see emails from her late into the night and suggest she stop working, but she always responded that she was just finishing up a few more emails.

Finally, her zest to learn & perform won and she earned a promotion after another six months. This time, in the appraisal meeting, she had moist eyes, not due to sadness but due to the joy of getting the word "manager" in her designation finally. She continued to excel and earned another promotion 24 months later. She was a classic example of someone motivated and willing to put in the effort to achieve her goals, both personal and professional. All she needed was direction and the right tools.

Eventually, I had to move on from the company, and although I never needed to offer her tissues during any of our reviews, her eyes welled up as I left the HR bay for the last time that day. A few years later, I received a WhatsApp message from her: "Hi! Just wanted to share that I completed my graduation. We moved to a bigger house. My daughter is getting married, and my son just started his first job. Please come to the wedding. By the way, we all still miss you here."

That night, I went to bed smiling, and I think that smile lasted all night long and into the next morning.