AIRED

Sept 24th is celebrated as the “International Girl Child Day”. On this occasion, my company (Aricent) organized a commemorative event for the girl students of Government Primary School, Sanjaynagar. The concept intrigued me the moment I read about this in my e-mail but what triggered me most were the words of someone close saying-- “I HATE DAUGHTERS !”…. The feminist in me was provoked and impulsively I decided I’m going ahead with this.

Although impetously decided, I was excited nevertheless. For long now, I’d been thinking of doing something worthwhile for children so this was a good chance. So on Sept 24th, 10 volunteers from Aricent set off to the Government school. We gathered around 50 girl students from class 5th, 6th and 7th. Each class was assigned three volunteers based on linguistic abilities, since the children were a mix of Kannada, Tamil and Telgu tongues and not to forget they understood rudimentary English too! Needless to say, I was heading a group for my Kannada background. As the girls lined up in their schoolground, their faces had a mixed expression of confusion and eagerness. After they settled down in the bus, I started breaking the ice, asking if they had seen planes? Some nodded enthusiatically, some silently acknowledged and some shouted “Yes Mam”. I continued saying “Have you seen them from very close, have you touched them?”. In unison they replied in negative. So that is where we took them, to an educational tour to the HAL Aerospace Museum. Listening this all the children clapped.

Once inside the museum, the whole grp was split into two, with one guide attached to each team. The tour had 3 parts. It started off with the photography exhibit on the growth of Indian aviation for the past 60 years. It was interesting for me to take a sneak peek at a piece of history but the kids were getting restless. The next leg of the tour was the prototype displays of various models of fighter jets, LCAs, MIGs, Helicopters, radars… etc. Wow! This was amazing. I became a child too as I explored these flying gaints. The last leg was the interior view of flights, the engines, the navigation systems and the pilot maneuvers. Our guide was saying Bangalore has the biggest HAL museum in whole of India and it looked like it. The tour ended with a quick look at the Air Traffic Control and for the kids a pilot simulation game which was simliar to one of those games in a playstation like Ameoba.

After the tiring tour of the museum, it was time for relaxation. As we distributed snack boxes, there was a sparkle in the child's face. Well! they had not expected this. We were told that some of these kids were below poverty line, so the simple snack of chocolates, cookies and juice was like a platter from a five course meal for the kids and they relished it.

COLOURS OF INNOCENCE

Following this was some interaction with the girls. We distributed papers, colors and paint brushes and told the children to draw anything they like. The girls playfully enjoyed this...... it was as though they were pouring their imaginations out. And that very situation reminded of the drawing competition scene from “Taare Zameen Par”............:) Every child busy putting his creativity on paper. Being pathetic with lines, curves and paints myself, when one of the little ones asked me to help her out to draw a pigeon, I was hesitant........ and the outcome , a disaster. The white pigeon that I was supposed to draw resembled a fish! And the girl next to me remarked “Mam, why did you draw a fish in the air!”, I laughed helplessly............:)

We concluded the day with distributing momentos to all children. They were thrilled. As we were departing, one girl told me "Mam, come to our school everyday" and an other one said "Mam, come to my house, I'll cook chicken biryani for you" and on clarifying my vegetarian habits, she said "No problem mam, I'll cook veg biryani for you". When we got back to the bus "Everyone was offering me a seat right next to them!". Thats when I realized that our one small effort made such a big difference to their lives.

Back in the bus, one girl told me this is not the same bus we came in. I casually overlooked it but after seeing the driver I realized the girl was right. She pointed out that the color of the seats and the curtains were different. We are blessed with comforts so we brush apart such simple things..... smart kids they were, all they lacked was a direction. I was more impressed with one of the teachers who accompanied the students, she was a big source of encouragement for the kids, a firm believer of the concept "Children of today are the citizens of tomorrow - gender no bar ".

On the ride back to school, all kids were excited enough to scream some movie songs. As the children got down from the bus each had a geninue smile of satisfaction and with a firm handshake they gratefully said "Thank you Mam", "Bye Mam". One of the kids was so emotional that she gave a warm hug to an Aricent volunteer. Later we came to know that the girl was earlier in a slum and all this was a terrific new experience to her and was overwhelmed with joy. The innocence that shined in the childrens' faces drastically changed my idea of government school children.

This event was organized in collaboration with Youth For Seva volunteer group. It’s a sort of an NGO which takes up several such socio-community initiatives. Latest one being the look out for volunteers to teach in Govt Schools....…. Naresh and Darshan, think about it.......... :)

Read more about the organisation at http://www.youthforseva.org/

Un-processed

In the corporate world I live in, various surveys on quality, statistics, work organization and people management galore. A couple of months back I attended one such survey response feedback meeting conducted in my team. The survey was centered on the capability of my manager in handling and molding his team. It goes without saying that almost all the team members cribbed in varying intensities – a few carped and caviled and for the habitually querulous folks it was a treat... :) I did not want to be left behind in the race so I gave my two cents too, I’d a few bickering and one among them was “the periodicity and the duration of our status meetings” !

My team meets every Friday to discuss the status and proceedings of the week. Although such meetings are vital, if it becomes superfluous and carried out just because of the fact that the process demands it then it definitely sucks. Considering the fact that I dislike such routine meetings, it becomes more irksome if such meetings are extended beyond the stipulated time. And when I complained about the same, I was rebuffed in a manner as if it was my personal problem! I’m not totally against such meetings but time is a precious resource, out of 40 industrious hrs 2 hrs cannot be whiled away for such feel-good-factor meetings! This makes the famous one-liner in the corporate lingo that “meetings are places where people meet to discuss that nothing can be done“ come true. Although my manager did not completely agree with me, the jeering did make way for a succinct update, Cheers.

This experience really made me wonder why are we Indians (on a whole) so process-oriented? In today’s changing trend being authoritatively process-stuck may be seen as an overhead. Recently, I read an article about the changing facets of Indian corporates, here the author seemed to corroborate my belief. He says “Leaders of the challengers are not driven as hard to meet quarterly pressures as global companies are. A Ratan Tata could never have conceived the Nano if he had the next Tata Motors quarterly conference call with analysts on his radar”. Here the author not only comments about the diligent followers of methods but also stresses the importance on leadership abilities to achieve global visibility.

Although India is relatively new in the MNC field as against other job profiles, in absolute terms the MNC industry is not all that very old. It can easily boast of biting the past 20 yrs of Indian history. 20 yrs prior, when India as a developing country set out her tender foot on the global map, her weapons were perseverance and obedience. Yes, I say obedience in the sense - aping the tried and the tested methods assiduously. But today as India spreads her wings on the global map, to stay ahead from her competitors she needs to be unfettered from such process. Its time that we set a process of our own!! India has all the qualities to make her presence felt globally but she is deterred by such peripheral issues.

On deeper thoughts I realized that indeed leaders are so anti-process, famous entrepreneures, leaders and rags-to-riches heros didn’t make it there because they followed what was common. There is something they thought out of box, there is something that they denied to follow, they were the mavericks kind sneering at the trifling issues.

But the question is can this happen with the service companies, which is predominant in India? If it cannot happen then India should stop serving and start leading, well it has already started……….. but positive thinking has never harmed anyone, right?

This situation reminds me of the IBM ad where recumbent employees in a conference room are “IDEATING”.

Good Luck Guys is what I can say.