Bal Kutir
I never we
nt to an orphanage, at least not with the sole purpose of interacting with the kids, until yesterday. My mother used to cringe at any suggestion of my doing so, because she somehow finds it downright upsetting. Even I was somehow convinced that I would be a little upset to meet some underprivileged kids. That, however was not the case. I've been part of some food donation campaigns, but the interaction with kids there is limited to distributing some basic food items, and those kids aren't really orphans. We mostly help out the nomadic labourers with their food supply. I am personally not convinced with this form of Social giving, because I feel it serves a very short term and narrow purpose, but that discussion I can leave for later.Yesterday, about 7 of us from office went to 'Bal Kutir', an orphanage run by a nice old lady in her own house. We went with the intention of holding a small drawing contest for the kids, and using their drawings to decorate our floor this Diwali, and we did just that (Yea, no
surprize). But I did come back with a very different view of these children. I did not feel any pity whatsoever. Maybe because they themselves were not reeling in self pity as I had imagined. They were just back from school when we got there, and so we had some amount of trouble getting them out, and getting them started. I was a little apprehensive at first, and I didn't know what to say. So we sat them down and distributed the coloring pencils and stuff, and asked them to make any drawing about Diwali. Some started with geometrical designs, and some with diyas, and most of the tiny tots started with a contorted version of whatever the person sitting next to them was drawing. It was fun watching them draw, and helping them out. I drew a diya for 'Golu', so that he could color it in, but he did not think very highly of my artistic talents and chose to politely turn his drawing sheet over and start afresh!Another one of the few boys there initially drew a boy holding a pataka in his hand and trying to light it with a candle, but chose to erase it when I patronizingly told him that it wasn't the most prudent method to light crackers! (yeah yeah, I'm boring.)
The kids seemed mostly unperturbed by our presence, which was probably because they interact with hordes of people all the time with rising guilt of low CSR. But they seemed to be well behaved and intelligent lot, and it was a lot of fun interacting with them. I hope to go again soon and spend some time playing cricket with them. :)
PS. There was also a guy who traced out a duck on his sheet, and along with one of the more demented people from office, insisted that it was a "Murga", and so he claimed to have made the advertisement for "Murga Chaap Patakas". Weird the people in my office I tell you :p
Labels: Education, Food, Life, Society
Values, Morals, Beliefs blah..
If you think I will make an attempt to differentiate, or elaborate on any of these, I won't. You can safely read the rest of the post. Only yesterday I had a discussion with a friend about how one feels right after reading a book by Ayn Rand (I mean Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged). We did mutually agree that for atleast a week, the reader moves into a Self critical and People perceptive mode. One tries to map actions of other people to the characters in the book, in order to stereotype them into Howard Roark, or Dagny Taggart. To try and evaluate your own actions and thoughts just to try and identify with the protagonist, because she does exalt them, and for atleast a week as I said, you believe her too.So, my week ended a while ago, and today I am attending a workshop called MPG, by BW, to cut the crap, the first task of the day has been identifying the 5 key "Values" that I live by. Not those that I want to live by (Health-Weight Loss), and not those other expect me to live by, but those I actually do live by. Now this is easier said than done, because, the values I finally settled on are different from those I marked given a list of 30 values and asked to choose my top 5. So, feedback from peers, manager, self assessment, instinct and introspection, all went into these top 5. I can't say I'm completely satisfied, but then I did a fair amount of thinking, and I'll settle with these. So, whats the point?
The point is that today I realized that some things I don't really care to pay much heed to consciously, actually drive many decisions I make. On the other hand, there are values I am expected to live by, but I don't really.
Making decisions is far easier, and frequently, even the most important decisions you make don't make you question the reasons you made them. Now, that I have a pack of cards with names of common "values" written on them, I can actually take some time to think what each of these means to me. Pick a card and think what it means to me and if my actions are aligned with this value or is it totally unrelated.
Add to that a cool leather folder and 2 days in a conference room rather than on my seat, working, this workshop seems fruitful already! Ok, lunch break over, update later.
(Btw, I'm told this is one of the most expensive employee training programs in the world, but then, who said freedom comes cheap!)
End of Day 1 Update:
Day 1 ended with handing over my managers opinions about me, and lot of things about me, like skill levels required and existing skill levels in a variety of things, Talent, critical skills, communication, leadership.. the works. Add that to the review I got from a peer, and lots of introspection, the biggest outcome is that person I project myself to be, is not really what my values suggest, or what I would like to be. Apart from that, My manager and I disagree on a wode array of things, something I need to discuss in a meeting with him, and let him know that my priorities are not as mechanical as his expectations... More after day 2..
Of MBA's and 6 figure salaries...
Every one wants to be an MBA these days, presumably because the second part soon becomes a 7 figure salary, and there are examples galore of even better. The primary motivation to do an MBA for the youth of the nation, I am told, is the immense demand in the market for MBAs, and hence the salaries. Most aspirants will give you some gibberish about wanting to make decisions and being a natural leader or something of that sort. We all know that precious few actually have those qualities. What's ironical though, is that someone with those qualities wouldn't be advertising them!The industry wants professional managers to run the business houses. So the MBA tag makes us believe that Anil Ambani can do a much better job of running a business than his father, because he is professionally qualified. Branding is the name of the game. Branding inspires trust, a benchmark for quality.. blah blah...
So, demand in the industry apart.. what else motivates people to do an MBA? Social status? Yes, I would say. Your entire ecosystem in India today expects you to be a manager. If you aren't a manager yet, you are obviously bad at what you do. If you were good at what you did, or if you had an MBA, you would probably be a manager by now. What apart from social status? Where do you see most of the MBA's? Come on.. take a wild guess.. Big powerful corporate houses? No. Finance companies with astronomical growth rates? No.
I find most of the MBAs in matrimonials. None of them seems to be able to find a girl for themselves! (Or be satisfied enough, and not look for other options, confused lot) Seems absurd.. 6 Feet tall, fair, Handsome, Teetotaler, MBA, B. tech., 7 figure Salary.. That should be enough dude!! You do not need a newspaper advertisement to find yourself a girl!! What the F*** were you up to all your life? (Yeah, we know the answer to that one!)
Punjabi auntijis swell at the prospect of showing their son's achievements off.. "You know, Hez been made VP over 10 people in his team" Sure.. Every one is a VP these days.. happens if you make a zillion divisions in your company, you can have a zillion VPs, a zillion presidents, general managers.. A clever trick by HR that went unnoticed I'd say.
However, the fact remains that most handsome MBA guys are available. So, either good girls are in short supply, or these guys have some serious problem.
P.S. This article stands to get un-published if I ever do an MBA :)
When it comes to success in business, an MBA degree is optional. But a GSD, which is only earned by Getting Stuff Done, is required.
