The way they work

My boss here is quite a big guy. Atleast that's what I can figure out. We really don't have a place/site where we can see hierarchies of roles; hence I cannot make any conclusion. My previous company used to have defined roles and all that used to be visible on Outlook. Here, the whole outlook of Outlook is different.

Anyways, in between, I must also tell you that its Diwali season here and the whole office is in bright colors (of course I am not. I didnt wish to wear kurta and enter a suburban train). Diwali here is as big as Christmas in the United States. People take off for more than a week. Literally no one is working in the office today. Most of them are preparing for the festive evening get-together for their respective departments and let me not tell anything about Monday and Tuesday next week. Work is out of question as the office will just be having a few faces here and there.

My boss is a very technically sound person. He has great ideas. I dont know how he has the time to know a lot of things but he does. Also, he has a lot of people reporting to him. By a lot, I mean really a lot, like hundreds. I am sure all these hundred don't meet him everyday, but it does make things complicated. For example, if I need to meet him, I need to go and find out where he is first and then fix up a time to meet him. This is because he would always be in other meetings all day.

This brings me to another juncture. People hardly use meeting requests here. All my meetings have been confirmed on the phone. Whenever I ask anyone for a time to meet, they say ' come anytime today ', which is a very ridiculous answer according to me. Nevertheless, I haven't been requested by anyone for a meeting. If they did, then I'd ask them to send a meeting request for sure. I wonder if there is any meeting agenda that is circulated at all.

Also, when you are discussing with another person inside a meeting room, someone would knock. They would come in and start talking to that other person. Once they are done, your conversation would continue. Nor the person you were meeting with or the person knocking the door takes the decision to postpone the second conversation. Bottomline: 'different meetings happen in parallel'. And because there is a good chance that another party is waiting for a discussion in the same meeting room while yours is happening, they may give their free unwanted advice to you when they hear your conversation.

I think there is more to come on this. Most of this is rather very funny to witness.

Twelfth Day

Its been twelve days now. Work has not started.  Over the last week or so, I met a lot of people who are in-charge of different departments within the information techology organization. Just the usual introductions and trying to understand what they are doing and how my future work will fit into the whole context etc etc

There is also a weird attendance policy in the company. You have to be in by 10.30 am and you can get out only by 6pm. If you came late or left early, you need to justify; else you lose your pay for the day. Stupidity I thought, only when I saw lines of people queuing up at 5.55pm; waiting to swipe their card out at 6pm and then rushing to catch the first shuttle to the station. I kinda get the feeling that a lot of people dont like this but I guess they cant help it.

Just like it happens in traditional Indian Companies, the Sir culture is present here as well. And being the north, rather west, they also add brother along with your name once in a while. Its becoming very difficult for me to switch to the respect format from a first name format. A friend of mine told me that eventually I will end up doing that - I mean start accepting the system and not questioning. Right now, its not like that. I definitely dont want to change; but lets see.

Evenings after office have been well spent. Vandhaan Vendraan and Mere Brother Ki Dulhan. I was glued to my seat watching Miss Kaif give that naughty wild smile - oooohhhh.. goose bumps and because she was playing a girl from London, she did all justice she could. Hopefully I will watch a Telugu movie during the weekend.

Ebony and Ivory

First of all, I should thank Vedanth Bharadwaj for having sent me a Facebook Invitation for this concert.

Ebony and Ivory - a concert by Anil Srinivasan and Sikkil Gurucharan accompanied by BS Purushottam on the Kanjira.

On a beautiful Friday evening (24th July 2009) in Kalakshetra, Anil and Guru entertained the audience for about 1.5 hours through some amazing raagas.

The concert was dedicated to the great MS Subbulakshmi. MS's piano, which dates back to almost 1947 was gifted to the Kalakshetra by the MS family. The school already had a piano that belonged to Rukmini Devi. Anil Srinivasan, Leela Samson and a few like minded people decided to restore the piano and celebrate the hard work through a concert. This free concert that was conducted on Kalakshetra premises attracted people like Anita Ratnam, Aruna Sairam and Unnikrishnan.

Anil played both pianos. MS's piano had been recently restored and did not have the capacity to stand a whole concert. So Anil just played one song on that one. All other songs were played on the other one.

All through the concert, Anil explained about how the piano was restored and the effort that had gone into the concert. He also talked about every song, gave a bit of background and history when it was required.

The first one was a ragamalika - Sindhu Bhairavi, Kalyanavasantha, Poorvikalyani, Neelambari and Madhayamavathi. It was such a free flowing music from Guru and Anil on the piano. The transitions from one raagam to another was very good and when it came towards Neelambari, it sounded so sweet that there was a feeling of happiness rushing through me.

Gurucharan also sang "Naan Oru Vilayaattu Bommaiyyaa" and the music was played on MS' piano.

There were two Annamacharya Krithis that were also sung. I forgot the songs. I think one was set in Pantuvarali.

There is no Sikkil-Anil concert without one from the albums they have released perviously. So Guru embellished the concert with Poonguyil from his album Maayaa. This Kalki Krishnamurthy song was set in the raagam Kaapi.


The last piece was Hari Tumharo set in Darbari Kanada and this song reminded me of Malare Mounama from the movie Karnaa and Vedant told me that even Poo Maalai Vaangi Vanthaal from Sindhu Bhairavi was quite similar.

Even though the concert seemed to be very quick, it was a great experience to see some stalwarts around me. It was simply wonderful to see the pride that everyone took in associating themselves with the MS Family or Kalakshetra. Whoever came on stage, gave us anecdotes about the piano, MS, musicians of the same era.

The concert was called Ebony and Ivory because the keys on MS' piano were made of ivory and the wood used was Ebony. The piano was bought for a princely amount of Rs.2000 during the pre-independence years and its great to see that it has been restored and will be housed within an institution that is world famous for its carnatic roots.

What are you doing?

The place I live (hotel, I mean) is quite a fantastic place. Its a Marriott and its a wonderful place for long stay.

There are a lot of firms around this place, the well known ones - Satyam (erstwhile), Alcatel Lucent and then a good number of pharma firms. NJ is the pharma hub. Novartis is just a few miles away and employs a lot of indians.

At the Marriott, english breakfast is served everyday. During breakfast everyday, I definitely make it a point to note what the other people are doing. And with respect to the Desi and ABCD crowd, I wanted to validate whether the Desi junta did go through some cultural adjustment training before they landed here and whether the ABCD junta still have some of their original indian roots. So here is the scoop.

There is one ABCD family - 3 to 4 children. I see them almost everyday. They first have their breakfast and then they start packing. The volume they pack is perhaps double the quantity they have for breakfast. Each one of them would carry a huge tray full of food - apples, banana, yogurt, milk cartons, just about everything you can find on the table. Then today evening I noticed them again. In the evening, Marriott serves snacks. Fortunately, we reached on time for some snacks. This family was again loading some 5-7 plates of snacks. I am surprised that the "if given free, i will drink phenyl" attitude is still around. So this is one side.

The other thing I noticed is about the indian mother with kindergarden kids. I dont know if this can be generalised to all indian mothers who come to the US but this was way too funny.

One guy landed here a few weeks back from India. His wife and kid joined him like a week later. One morning, I saw them at the breakfast table. The guy had his breakfast and left to the office. The mom was having breakfast and the kid was sitting on a baby chair. I think the kid was getting a bit uncomfortable. So, he tried getting out of the chair. The mom was chatting with her husband's colleague. When she noticed the kid, she raised her voice "Aman! What are you doing?". The child looked a bit perplexed. He didnt utter a word. Few minutes passed. Again he started moving. The mom goes "Aman! What are you doing? Why cant you sit in one place?" and all that "cant you keep quiet" type speech.

I was like. What the hell. A week back, you were probably talking to the kid in Hindi, or Gujarati or definitely an indian language. And all of a sudden, you switch to English? Are you out of your mind.

I am sure the kid had a mind to say this - "WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Talking to me in a completely unknown language. Are you out of your mind?"

God save these people.

Poem: Her favorite steel tumbler

she woke up
morning birds her alarm
this sunday
was no different

nowadays she was
used to the rhythm

prepare
deck up
new batch arrives
stand straight
genuflect
sit gentle
sing devotional
serve coffee and snacks
listen to elders jabbering
ancestral connections

nothing made sense
hot and bothered
acted with obedience
she held her emotions tight
never spoke an extra word
in her own territory

the hand had moved
a few degrees south
in some time she thought
life will be normal

with anger and hatred
she looked
at the kitchen sink
tumbler and plates
put to wash

for,
the seventeenth time
a stranger's lips had
left
another dirty mark on her
favorite steel tumbler

Comments Stealing

I found this set of comments on another blog that I frequently visit. once you start reading you'll understand the context of this huge debate. after reading through all this, i really wonder if educated people think like this? tradition, culture, religion is all apart. leaving all that, for all practical purposes, you'll still feel that this guy is all crap.

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raj, on May 20th, 2008 at 11:06 am Said:
woman are impure when they have ****. i own a travel agency, and we never allow the woman employees to take care of the ticketing needs. see so many people are going for teerth yaatra, or for imp journeys. if a woman with **** does their ticket, it could be very unlucky for them. even my wife agrees. i have seen myself pickles going bad when impure woman has touched. women are not bad, but they need to be careful to not give others bad luck. some precautions must be taken. you are wrong.

raj, on May 21st, 2008 at 5:19 pm Said:
hi neha - raj again. first of all i want to say that all of you are blindly following the western practice. their women don’t know how to control themselves - and that is why babies are born without mothers being married. that is why they are smoking, drinking and having sex without respect for anyone. following purity rules allows women to exercise self discipline. and to develop a pure mind. god has given woman **** so that she knows that she cannot do everything a man can…….. otherwise women forgets that she has to take care of babies. see, these rules remind even unmarried womens what their duties are…. that they must always sacrifice.

i am not scared of you women.. you can come and run after me.. but let’s see if you can run when you are having ****. i am betting you cannot. if you are a good hindu follower then you follow these rules, otherwise you can become a west person or convert even. why make hinduism impure with ur actions??

my wife agrees with me. not because she thinks i am mad. but because she knows that i am correct. our shastras say that wives must always obey husbands. but you are an impure so called hindu who is not really hindu, so you will never these understand these things.

raj, on May 22nd, 2008 at 11:49 am Said:
why are all you people so arrogant? what makes you think you are smarter than years of vedic knowledge and our forefathers. having a **** is natural, but it is naturally impure. why are you all laughing at me? tomorrow, when an impure women effects your luck and things become really bad for you, then i will laugh at you all.

raj, on May 22nd, 2008 at 11:57 am Said:
ALSO - ankur, i think you are controlled by all womenin your life. that is why you say these things. a real man would stick to wisdom and not try to impress.

raj, on May 23rd, 2008 at 6:28 am Said:
how dare you all say i am only joking. this makes me very ANGRYYYY. your arrogance means you never listen to anyone, and think of people like me, as jokers? i am very much real. i am very much serious. WOMEN AND MEN ARE NOT EQUAL. men cannot have children. women have children and because of that, they must sacrifice a lot. it is a gift from god, and they have to show their appreciation for god by separating herself … like a sanyasi. THIS IS NOT FUNNY AT ALL. IT IS A serious issue. you are all fools.

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Ok the reason behind getting these absolutely stupid comments on to this page is because of the following links that I happened to read.

Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
Link 4