Chapter #1: Wedding Announcement

Picture Courtesy: Carolyn Brandt

How I Told My Mother about the guy I fell in love with. 

Here's 'The Announcement'

Months of discussion on whether to inform families and weeks of deliberations on how to do that I came up with a plan & executed it just right. It still makes me think how I gathered the guts to do that and makes me laugh every time. 

Backstory: My parents had started sending me pictures of random guys and prospect husbands but I was in a long term relationship. Even though I was quite sick of a telephonic, small talk relationship, I knew I was with the right person. I knew I wanted to be able to spend more time to have deeper conversations with him, share a meal, travel, take joint decisions and much more, so I thought - let's do it? 

8 long work hours of Saturday later, I get in the car, leave for home and realise midway that maybe I'm not ready but I know that's only because I haven't decided my outfit and don't have my friends around to give me a pep talk or share the moment or record it. But it was momentary. When we know we are doing the right thing, with the right intentions, we get courageous. In that moment, we get the not- everything-has-to-be-perfect spotlight. 

I shake the nerves off and gather the guts to read the text from my boy. It said "ETA: 1 hour". I gulp my fear down the throat, nervously smile looking at the mirror in the lift and open the door to my house. 

After a normal post work -day-hugging-smiling-daily-office-chit-chat over tea, I tell my mother some of my 'friends' are coming over and wait for my boy to ring the bell and sit on the couch while I make my mother dress up proper to meet and greet my 'Friends'.

Here's how the scene played:

Frame 1: She enters the room in her penguin walk, sees my boy sitting there alone

Frame 2: He stands up, bows his head

Frame 3: She makes small talk, bows her head in response

Frame 4: My evil self smirks a little and I go "No one else is coming. This is the man, ask whatever you need to and let's get on with it".

And that's How I Told My Mother about the love of my life.

                                                   

Can you see through our National Flag?

We are done and dusted with the idea of freedom. We are. I know that. From opinion pieces to research papers, most of us have read everything there was. We have analysed the texts, the words, the lines and even the spaces between them and I have come to realise is that freedom has no one definition but if there is anything about it that most of us will agree with- It's the fact that freedom is about choices.

What that makes us free is to form an opinion, being able to speak and act as we want to without being tried for it. But the moment you impose it, you traverse across the thin line of freedom and become its enemy.

It is about making choices as far as you are not curbing other person's freedom to make choices.

You are curbing my freedom by forcibly trying to enter my personal space or restricting my movement by shouting, yelling or terrorising me when I drive back home from work.

You are curbing my freedom if you are imposing your decisions on me in the name of tradition.

You are curbing my freedom if you are imposing your language, your religion and your opinions on me.

Most women in our country, the tribals, the minority in this sense, are not free. The Chandigarh stalking case, the lynching cases across the country and the fact that we are still selling skin whitening cream saying that it will help us succeed in life speak volumes about where we lag.

Our national flag stands for strength, peace, and prosperity. It stands for our freedom which we won with our cultural, psychological and physical strength. Cultural because if anything 200 years of British rule could do to our forefathers and foremothers was - to make us adopt their ways, not eradicate theirs. Psychological because British official accounts' narrate how mentally disturbed it made them when they oppressed the oppressed and physical because it cost blood.

The fight for our freedom is not very different today. Our fight is cultural, psychological and physical. Just like we can't see if we put out the national flag in front of our windscreen, we won't be able to see if we keep ignoring all that's wrong with this country. There is nothing wrong with loving your country, but to romanticise it, in my opinion, is wrong. Our job I feel as people who can empathise, as people who can understand the nuances of life is to tell people what we believe is right.

And so, my job here as someone who is free to form an opinion and realises its duty, is done.

Here's Faiz Ahmed Faiz' 'Bol ke labz aazad hai tere'

Bol ke labz aazad hai tere

Bol, zabaan ab tak teri hai,
Tera sutwan jism hai tera –
Bol, ke jaan ab tak teri hai.

Dekh ke aahangar ki dukaan mein
Tund hai shu’le, surkh hai aahan,
Khulne-lage quflon ke dahane,
Phaila hare k zanjeer ka daaman.

Bol, ye thora waqt bahut hai,
Jism o zabaan ki maut se pahle;
Bol, ke sach zinda hai ab tak –
Bol, jo kuchh kahna hai kah-le!

Corporate world woes: That Are-You-Healthy email from HR is how they choose to mock you

One thing about being an adult is that you start checking emails more than your social media accounts. Another thing about being an adult is that you don't particularly enjoy doing that, mostly because the emails are either from NGOs asking you for money or from banks suggesting you borrow money (It's a lose-lose situation in both cases) Anyway. Other than emails from NGOs and banks, we get emails from the HR. Now here is the thing about mails from HR- they are harmless but they mock. Mock how? Consider this- No matter how much you want to use the 'Kaam utna karo ki salary zyadda lage' mantra- it's not going to work. Courtesy, universities our bosses went to study at. Given that I am so suspicious of everything in the world [ Eg: I still think Hillary Clinton paid Donald Trump to stand for the Presidential elections so that she could win but then she got trolled and I firmly believe that the bird which sat on Bernie Sander's podium during his speech was trained to do so. Also, I have zero faith in technology. Even though my auto sync is forever switched off, I make sure I don't click things I don't want people to know about because I get a feeling Apple is watching us and that it is partially funded by the US government to provide data ], it was not a big deal for me to think that MBA students have chapters explaining tactics to exploit their employees without them knowing it. Or to sound subtle- To make the most of their resources. Now, since by this age I have plenty of friends working in corporates; here's all that I have been able to figure out and if you're an MBA, let me know how close to reality it is.

The tactics in my view include:

1) Divide and Rule: Don't let your employees become friends
2) Tell them you're an NPA for the company. A Non-Performing Asset, In other words- A liability
3) Tell them their ideas are naive and then add a few flowcharts and tables and present them as yours
4) Give them big targets and the day they reach the target, increase it by half so that the initial target becomes the minimum target.
5) Act sweet.
And 6) Decorate your HR department with showpieces.

Coming back to why I feel the HR department mocks: So last Thursday I got an email saying that the department has arranged a free check up sorts for its employees- For liver and for kidney. I mean? You guys think we are so free we drink often? If there's anything we need a check up for- It's the brain. And the eyes. I am not sure how sitting in front of your system for such long hours can affect your liver or your kidney? The graphic attached asked- How healthy are you. Well, I don't know. I have massive back ache, my brain is exhausted and I am thirsty but I can't get up from my seat because WORK. But sure, let us get a liver check up and see how healthy I am, Showpiece.

Sometimes, I think it's a huge hoax where the government and the corporate worlds are not very different from each other. Consider this- You pay the government for education-the government pays you for working,-you pay the government through taxes-government makes you ignore your health- you fall sick- the government gives you medicines- you think it is taking care of you. Same is with the corporate world. But my problem is not with deceiving because that's what every government does. (Pentagon, are you smiling?) My problem is with mocking. You cannot not get noticed when you do things like this.

Liver check-up.

 WTH.

It is like asking a painter to take tuitions for Mathematics and like asking an ice cream seller if he needs a microwave at his shop and like asking Punjabi parents if they need lessons on good parenting. Futile. They won't do it. They don't need it.