“I was crying for a pair of shoes, when I found someone who had no legs!”

This is about a day back in December 2009 when I was in Trivandrum. I had got a job in a company there just a month ago. My company had organized a visit to an orphanage. Although going there was not mandatory, I went because I had contributed some money for buying Christmas gifts for the orphans.

I do not remember the name of the orphanage. That was the first time I visited an orphanage. Initially I had the notion that there were very strict rules to be followed in an orphanage. I had thought that my visit would be very formal. Never once could I imagine before my visit that it would become one of the most memorable days of my life – a day which will bring tears to my eyes whenever I think of it, a day which will really make me think!

Initially for about half an hour or so it was very quiet, because we had gone to the hall where there were children mostly aged less than 2 years, most of them sleeping. The few that were awake looked at us as if we were aliens. Slowly, one or two, with a lot of hesitation, would come to us and get up on our laps. I can still feel those soft little hands patting on my face and pulling on my hair, those little playful fingers feeling my face. I can even feel myself kissing those soft chubby cheeks – it was so beautiful. There were so many of them. The commotion increased and the sleeping beauties woke up and looked at us with scared faces, and some of them started crying. It took time to calm them down.

Then we were taken to another room where there were children who were a bit older, some, by God’s grace, normal, and the rest, not fortunate enough either to speak or to understand anything. I remember, in that room there was a little girl who got up on my lap, hugged me like she had found her own brother, and she just would not get down or let me go. The Sisters in charge of the orphanage were more than mothers to these little children. A woman’s caring for one’s own child is something, and a woman dedicating her life to caring for so many children with a smiling face, none of whom were born to her, just like a mother cares for her own child, requires more than a mother! That day I understood what Sister means in Christianity. I felt a sense of respect and love growing inside me for them. I understood what being a human being means, and what the word ‘humane’ means.

The day went amidst much merry making at the orphanage. Christmas gifts were given to the children. I returned at home in the evening. It was all very good then. At night when I went to bed, I do not know why, but my heart became so heavy. Thoughts were clogging my mind. Why did I not bring that little girl with me? I did not have a sister. I could have brought her and kept her with my parents. She could have parents. I started missing the love that the little girl gave me.

A big realization struck me. I had always had my own parents by me to look after me through good and bad. I had a family, and my parents had helped me get a job so that I would not die of hunger. I had already started earning and I knew I would be earning much higher in the future – I would earn a lot of worldly comfort. Even then I was not content with what I had. I was always crying for more. What about those children who had no idea to whom they were born, or about anyone in this world who would tell them whom they were born to? They are so ill-fated that they were given birth by some irresponsible bitch whose intended to have some fun with some equally irresponsible son of a bitch. Otherwise they might have been born to some ill-fated mother who had been driven by poverty to abandon her child to be taken care of by someone else, and herself commit suicide.

I do not know when I fell asleep...

Important experiences in professional life!

My half yearly appraisal has not gone good at all. I had tried to work hard, and I indeed worked hard for at least as long as I was present in office. I discussed with my supervisor, and I was informed that my growth curve in the first half of this financial year has been a downward progressing curve - my performance was not up to the mark! I was just amazed, and simultaneously taken aback also.

Well, my being taken aback or getting upset doesn't matter to these people at all. After all it is a private company that I am working in. So I decided to do an analysis of my experiences in the past two years of working in this company.

My analysis and what I have learnt in my professional life of just two years is summarized below:

1. It does not matter how much you work and how much you perform and how many critical issues you solve, the value added to your rating is in arithmetic progression. However, the number of leaves taken by you  (no matter how distressed you may be) counts very distinctly, and contributes to your rating getting diminished in geometric progression. ( I had to take almost a month's leave to get my father treated at one of the best hospitals in India).

2. It does not matter how much overtime you have worked, and how much time your supervisor has wasted in useless gossip about nude girls, and abusing his boss, and all sorts of similarly ugly stuff (all during office hours), he will always rate you lower than himself, no matter how big a moron he himself might be. After all he is your boss - he is somebody SUPERIOR to you, and that needs to be proved!

3. Whatever good work you do is never reported by your supervisor to the management. However, just commit a single mistake - the issue is immediately escalated and an entry is made into the performance record file for the employee for the same.

4. For any good work that you do, you have to maintain your own records and keep on reminding your supervisor about that. However for any small mistake that you commit, which might have little or no impact on the actual production environment, the supervisor immediately makes a record of the same in his register and keeps on reminding you about it all the time to negate all the good work that you might have done, and eventually lowering your confidence in your work, which is even better for him, because that is an additional negative point which he can highlight during the appraisal process, and of course that is the result of all his hard work of keeping only all your bad records.

5. The moment you ask for a release from your project, your importance gets lowered in the team. You may do something outstanding, but that is rated as just very ordinary work - something anyone can do! However, you will be made to work like an ass, treated like a pig, and eventually you will not be released from your project - you will have to resign from the company itself.

6. Your supervisor will speak with you in whatever tone he may like, and whenever he wants to in that tone. However, just try to retort once in the same tone that he is speaking in, and hell comes down upon you. You may also be threatened of being handed a pink slip. (Well, that does not matter - all those threats are empty).

7. Your supervisor will be the biggest coward that you will ever see. Raise an issue that might result in challenging your supervisor's peers or his boss, and your supervisor will never appear at the scene of the fight. He will always have some useless meeting at that time - he will suddenly become very busy within seconds of getting any premonition that he might have to speak against his boss or his peers for some employee from his own team, even though that might be for a just cause. After all he has to maintain a good image. He cannot hurt his image for a member from his own team, because he also cares for his own appraisal. He will literally curl his tail in between his two legs and vanish from the scene just like the ghost from Alladin's magic lamp used to vanish in the twinkling of an eye. And if by any chance he is forced into the scene, instead of protecting you, he will humiliate you publicly, and make the just cause unjust.

8. Even if you have an accident and your colleagues come to know of that, there will be only one or two in a few hundred who will be ready to take you to the hospital in his/her personal car or motorcycle. After all burning petrol will drain out your colleagues' hard earned money. You might even see more brazen people who will take you to the hospital and charge you for petrol that was burnt in doing you this much of charity.

And I supposedly work in an IT company that is considered to be one of the best of its kind in employee welfare management. God knows what is happening elsewhere!

They could have brought their wives and sisters and daughters to join the walk...

I was reading in “The Times of India” that men in huge numbers supported the Slutwalk in Delhi. They were the ones that shouted the slogans at the top of their voices. A certain article in the paper starts like this – “Some of the most ardent supporters of the Slutwalk were, ironically, men. They were present in large numbers, shouting slogans and holding placards. Their message was loud and clear – we are joining the campaign for the sake of our wives, sisters and daughters who face harassment nearly everyday….”. Another  line in the same article states a man as saying – “Rapes are perpetuated by perverts, not clothes…”

It is strange that men have these views about women and their sense of dress. Are rapes really committed by just perverts, and if that is so are the perverts only responsible for the rapes? Do the clothes put on by these Sluts not provoke the perverts? I doubt that these men really supported the cause of women, because supporting the cause of women does not require a man to join a Slutwalk and shout slogans at the top of his voice. Fighting for the cause of women can can be done in a much better and much organized way, rather than joining a procession which was full of uncouth placards carried by Sluts. "Strange", is all that I have to say about this country…