MellowDrama

My maid was regaling me with one of her fights with her husbands. This one less violent than the others in terms of the topic. She had packed potatoes for a meal for him. She had forgotten to serrve him some sort of curry or dal. The man cribbed that when she was fasting she treated the rest of the family with contempt. And so we launched a lengthy discussion on how careless we women are with ourselves rather than treat our men and families with contempt. While fixing a meal if anything, say for eg dough, finishes we don't tell our men/families to eat a chapati or two less to save for ourselves rather make do with bread or left-over rice. Tell a pregnant woman that she should include iron in her diet for the benefit of her to-be-born child and she won't ever forget to eat that. But tell it to her otherwise or say that it would do your body a great deal of good, she will come up with superb excuses tro have forgotten. Are we women plain, simple stupid?

Everything is so temporary. Everthing is changing. Nothing remains same- the moment you realise this you will be happy. I tried to reason with myself along these lines yesterdy night but today in the morning when I had to put it in practice I failed miserably. When I was told that the only trainee left has decided to leave I was shocked. The intensity of the shock was very rude. It hit me hard and I had thought I was beyond being hit so hard. By the evening I had managed to pacify myself. What helped probably was removing the 'I' from the entire situation. The trainee had not quit me, she had quit the paper. The trainee had not behaved disrespectfully with me but had cribbed about the organisation. She was thankless to the opportunity of work and learning that she got here and not to me. In the end, that is of the day, I realised the wisdom of my earlier attempts and decided that it paid to be distant and detached, especially from the breed called the trainees.

I saw Black Friday, last Thursday, on my birthday. I mentally prepared myself for a lot of blood and gory details, chappals strewn all over the road, limbs, wailing men and women, lonely child- kind of images. I was carrying a tissue with me to keep the tears in check. I had even taken a few deep breaths before the film began. BUT…I was speechless through the entire length of the film. It did not evoke any pity or pathos. The film told the facts as they were. It did not take sides, rather it said so much of both the sides. The best thing about the film is that it said much without speaking. I am not talking about messages. The message is loud and clear and in the very first frame- ‘An eye for an eye makes the entire world blind.’ I am talking about the way the scenes were constructed. Inspector Marya’s angst, Badshah’s distress and disgust with running from place to place, the hotelier who kills his family and commits suicide after witnessing the harassment meted out to two Muslim wome...

Saif Ali Khan is doing it now and that too for potato chips but Anubhav has been earning his bread, butter and more by teaching people salsa for more than five years. It’s been three years since he has been boarding Shatabdi in the mornings to come down to Chandigarh on weekends for… “just dancing some more.” “All you need to learn salsa is high heeled shoes and a single piece of clothing,” says Anubhav, who was just your regular lad before salsa took over his life. Salsa in Spanish means sauce and in this context, Anubhav explains, it refers to the flavour or the style. Some more gyan comes our way. “Salsa patterns typically use three steps during each four beats, one beat being skipped. However, this skipped beat is often marked by a tap, a kick, a flick, etc. Typically the music involves complicated percussion rhythms and is fast with around 180 beats per minute,” says Anubhav. Anubhav went to learn dancing as a hobby after finishing college in 1997. He joined Fitness Planet in Panc...

Neena Singh, Senior VP, Head Branch Banking (North), HDFC Bank Right now, on her table, you will find Jack Welsh’s Winning, Amartya Sen’s Identity and Violence; Bimal Jalan’s The Indian Economy and Undercover Economist by Cim Harford. She is reading them all. Well, she is also reading Bachchan’s Madhushala and keeps sprinkling couplets during our conversation. Neena Singh is the only female regional head in the HDFC Bank. A senior vice president, she has been in banking past 28 years. We stole some time out of her busy schedule to give us an insight into banking. What is the current scenario in the banking sector? The kind of banking that is gaining ground is retail branch banking. Because it is broad-based as a customer gets all kinds of products under one roof, it is being largely preferred. HDFC Bank is among companies with the lowest attrition rate. How do you manage that?Our objective is to become a world class bank. That can happen only when our efficiency level is very high, we ...

The point which I was always had against a job with a BPO was that you have to compromise on your nationality. But the good news is that this is changing or rather has already changed. Now that outsourcing is being accepted as a global phenomenon, call centres have decided to drop the aliases and accented English has given way to global English. Says Akhtar of Vision Unlimited, “Handling sdervices for clients from different voice cultures is tough. Everyone understands the need for global English. With time American as well as the British clients have accepted the fact that India can provide quality services, so they do not mind speaking to an Indian.”“Now everyone knows that they are speaking to an Indian. Companies abroad realise that it is more important that the message reaches across to a client rather than stress on developing an accent,” feels Sanjay Bhartiya, who has been involved with training people for BPOs for past four years.And just what is global English? Says, Sona a tr...

Aanandika Sood What are winners made of, what is the secret of their success and what sets them apart? We spoke to a few of those who had made it to the IIMs and to our surprise, they were very much human, like us but their determination, realisation of their own potential, their hard work and their faith in their abilities were what made them stand out.Kenny Heish who got a call from all six IIMs says, “I had this somewhere at the back of my mind but I got serious about it only a couple of years back.” Others also pitch in. Says Shipra who is doing engineering in Telecommunication and IT from UIET, “I always wanted to take up a managerial job. For me the biggest inspiration was that I did not want to end up as a programmer.” Kiranjyot, who is pursuing engineering in Electronics and Communication, had also known her mind forever. She says, “Look at the current market scenario. If I am able to combine my technological know-how with an MBA, it is a lethal combination.”Yagneshwar NV from ...